The Dandy, and What We Can Learn from Him

A closer look at the power of personal style, and the merits of "playing yourself"

"Cary Grant once said that he played Cary Grant for years, and finally became him. I think there's that kind of feeling with dandies," says Nathaniel "Natty" Adams, who, along with photographer Rose Callahan, profiled 57 such men for the new book I Am Dandy: The Return of the Elegant Gentleman. "You can see in the diversity of the men in the book that there is definitely this idea that they want to be a character of some kind. They want to play themselves."

The men in I Am Dandy — from Gay Talese, Nick Wooster, and our own Nick Sullivan to Patrick McDonald, Simon Doonan, and the more ostentatious side of the dandy pack — certainly aren't playing anyone else, even if they do run the gamut of personal styles. But no matter how you define "dandy," unless you're looking for tips on waxing your impossibly long mustache, the lesson to take away from both groups is the same.

And that lesson is this: There is value in dressing to realize your own conception of yourself, in getting up each morning and striving, through the way you put yourself together, to create a version of you that meets with your own lofty expectations. It's as much about how you see you as it is about how the world sees you.

Are we suggesting you don a waistcoat and riding boots and wax up your handlebar before stepping out each morning. We are not. At all. But we are suggesting you take a cue from these gentlemen and keep in mind the idea that style is yet another means of fashioning a better you. We may not all be playing suave, Old Hollywood charmers like Cary Grant did, but we're all starring in our own little personal movies each day. Don't you want the main character to be worth watching?

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